Customer Reviews

The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City

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If you want to know the history of Tarot cards and games, this is THE book. Although a few new discoveries have been made since this book was written in 1980, nothing else comes close to the depth and detail of "The Game of Tarot".

The books consists of 600 pages (large pages with small type) of fully footnoted historical comments and game rules. Often the original historical text is presented along with Dummett's translations and interpretations. The detailed asides are both a strength and a weakness of the book: they provide both a broad background, but can sometimes you have to go through a lot of asides to get to the main point. One other minor nit-pick: Dummett has some very strong ideas on some controversial subjects. Although he usually gives an excellent detailed explanation of how he came to that conclusion, I feel that he sometimes overstates the case. All in all, "The Game of Tarot" is the best and most through book on the history of playing cards, and a great reference for Tarot games of all sorts.